Popcorn And Waiting
by Tallulah Grammar Songstress
Summary: Several short oneshot fanfics, one slightly fluffy, mainly focusing on Tetsuo and Kaori.
1. Popcorn and Waiting

Popcorn

It was eleven p.m. on Kaori's birthday, and Tetsuo wasn't there.

It wasn't like he'd promised or anything.  Kaori kept telling herself this as she squinted through her reflection in the window, wishing to see his bike skidding to a halt in the yard below. 

He was so proud of that bike.  He'd only got it a few months ago, and he was still a little shaky on it, but he said Kaneda was teaching him and soon he'd be as good as Kaneda was – no, better!

Kaneda.  Of course.  Kaori bit her lip hard and felt the tears painful in her eyes.  Why would he want to come and see her when he had cool people to hang around with?

She gazed one more time at the window, then wrenched the blind down.

Everyone else had forgotten.  But Tetsuo had remembered!  She knew he had!  He'd been funny and all a few days before, said he had to go to the shops and wouldn't tell her why. 

She'd assumed he was buying her a present. 

Guess she'd assumed wrong. 

Thirteen years old today and maybe things would be different now.  Maybe it was silly to imagine you could keep up the old childish friendships.  He was changing, she could see it, he was growing taller and bigger, and his voice was heavier than hers now.

She felt like she hadn't changed at all.  Maybe that was the problem.  Maybe he thought she was a baby.  But who else would he talk to?  He told her everything, he always had. 

But then, he'd been doing less of that too.

Suddenly she heard a crash from downstairs, and froze.  It sounded like the fire exit had been wrenched open.  She didn't dare hope; stumbling out of her room and down the landing, she was halfway down the stairs before she realised it might _not _be him, it might be just another one of the kids coming in drunk, it might be someone really bad…and she froze on the stairs, the sticky lino cold on her bare feet, little breezes poking at her legs, and the darkness filling her nose and mouth and eyes…

But it was worse standing still, so she forced her way on, heart crunching in her chest, and she saw a light in the common room, harsh on her eyes, and ran towards it.

Tetsuo was sitting in one of the battered, itchy armchairs, and he smiled at her, nervously, and held out a cardboard container.  "Want some popcorn?"

Waiting

Tetsuo knew he wasn't meant to be scared.  He knew he was meant to able to act as cool and don't-give-a-shit as the rest of the gang were doing.  He knew this wasn't even a big deal, they weren't going to be taken out and shot or anything.

But the fact remained that as they stood in a grumpy row outside the principal's office, he _was _scared, and all he could do was stay still, hands curled into fists.  His hands always shook when he was frightened.  He'd been trying to break the habit for years, but he hadn't managed it yet.

He would manage it this time.  Now Kaneda had let him stay in this new gang he'd started, now they were actually going out riding at night, now they weren't little kids any more…he'd be a new Tetsuo, someone no one would mess with, someone who'd be admired as much as Kaneda already was. 

If only his hands would stop shaking.

They'd only been at this stupid school for one term and _already _everyone was getting on their case.  It wasn't like it had been much damage, the broken window had been an _accident…_kinda…and if Yamagata hadn't got mad at the teacher who discovered them they probably would have got away with it…

Stupid school.  They'd laughed at him on his last day in the last school when they'd found out where he was going.  _Only losers go there, _the richer kids had sneered, looking at his grubby T-shirt and the peeling soles of his shoes.  _Only morons go there, _the smart ones had whispered, watching as he struggled to copy down what was on the blackboard.  _Only the failures go there, _the teacher had said as Tetsuo cleared out his locker.  _You hear me?  You're on a fast track to nowhere now, and it's all your own fault. _

But Kaneda had grinned, and when the teacher had gone, he'd said, _they're all pathetic.  You know what they're not saying?_

_What?_

_Only the **cool **kids go there.  Who wants to hang around a dump like this?  Who gives a damn about college and working your butt off for the rest of your life?  At least we'll be with people who won't be afraid to have a little fun.  _

Tetsuo must have still looked worried, because Kaneda grinned and said _Besides__, what are you so stressed about?  **I'll** be there, won't I?  I can save your butt any time you need it.  _

And Tetsuo had grinned, and suddenly felt better, even if his hands had been shaking so much he'd not been able to close his locker properly.

Kaneda had been right, though.  Now they had proper friends, cool friends, people like them who didn't take crap from anybody. 

Okay, they'd laughed at Tetsuo, calling him Kaneda's pet at first because he'd stuck so close to the guy, and they still rolled their eyes when he fell off his bike or whatever (wasn't his fault he was still learning, was it?  He was trying) but even so, they were his friends and they were a proper gang now and that was cool, and, and everything was gonna be okay – he clenched his fists tighter and shoved them into his pockets. 

Tetsuo wasn't so frightened about the pain…it had happened before, hadn't it?  He was just frightened he'd cry, or throw up, or wet himself, or something that would make him look stupid and make all the others laugh at him.  He'd try not to, obviously he would, but he'd always tried not to cry and half the time it hadn't worked…

He swallowed.  His hands were tingling in his pockets, and he felt sick. 

The others didn't look too happy, sure.  Kai was kicking the wall, Yamagata was nervously cracking his knuckles, and two of the others had been punching each other in the arm for the past two minutes. 

And Kaneda was telling awful jokes every so often, and Tetsuo suddenly remembered _he _hadn't had this happen to him either.  But he wouldn't be scared.  He would be fine.  He was always fine.

Lucky bastard.

And now they were being told to go in, and Kaneda glanced round at him, and Tetsuo was irritated as he noticed the familiar look cross his friend's face: _Tetsuo's scared again …_

"Someone stop my hands from shaking," he muttered to himself.  They were actually hurting now.

"Line up straight, if you scum know how," the Jaw said as they filed in.  "And take your hands out of your pockets, kid."

Tetsuo tried not to gulp.  Slowly he eased his hands back into the open.  His knuckles were aching and he knew he'd have nail marks burnt into his palms for days afterwards, but he wasn't going to stand here and have everyone see Tetsuo trembling…

He didn't hear much of what was said.  It was only what had always been said to him – _useless, a let-down, unacceptable, last chance, penalty points, permanent record, disappointed.  _Yeah, yeah. 

"Is there anything you have to say for yourselves?" the principal finished.  "You two –" addressing himself to Tetsuo and Kaneda – "have only just arrived here, and I had _hoped _you would not have fallen in with such…unsuitable friends."

Everyone waited for Kaneda to speak. 

He shrugged, and said, "Yeah, but this place sucks, so I figure, you know, I'll be friends with who the hell I want."

Tetsuo felt the same sensations Kaneda was always provoking these days – admiration, crossed with jealousy that he'd never be able to sound that cool.  This time the jealousy was stronger.  Kaneda got to make the teachers mad, while he, Tetsuo, had to stand here pretending he wasn't shivering with fear…

_I'll show them.  _Slowly he unclenched his fists, and gritted his teeth to stop the trembling of his palms.

And as the Jaw came towards him – for one blissful moment his palms were still.

Even as blood filled his mouth, he was suddenly happy.


	2. Dust and Darkness

(A/N: I realised I forgot to put any copyright in the last chapter although I'm sure everyone knows I _don't _own Tetsuo, Kaori, Kai, Kaneda, Kei or Yamagata. Or anyone else from Akira. They belong to Mr Otomo. Come on, people! These short fics are written using criteria from the drabble(low hyphen) me community on livejournal(dot)com. The first of these pieces is based on some scenes from the manga, book 6. I don't own the scenario.)

Dust To Dust****

Tetsuo's feet crunched over the stony ground. Kaori was heavy in his arms; her head rested against his arm, her hair soft on his wrist. The wind was picking up, flicking at her hair and her torn, grubby school uniform. A thin line of blood was oozing from her mouth, oddly shiny against the dry skin of her lips. No retching gore for Kaori. She wasn't a show-off, an attention-seeker…

He'd closed her eyes himself, but only because she would be embarrassed if she saw people looking as she was carried through the rubble by the great Lord Tetsuo. People might laugh. Even now he was taking care to keep her skirt pulled straight, the hem tucked under his arm. He wasn't going to have anyone perving at her.

Her shirt was damp. Though the blood was starting to dry now, becoming rough and scratchy. He hoped when she woke up she wouldn't be too uncomfortable. He'd try and find her some other clothes. All right, so there wasn't much around, but he was Prime Minister still (wasn't he?) He'd get someone to find something for Kaori to wear. He'd like it to be something pretty, something she'd be happy to get. He'd like to make her smile.

The air was dusty and thin, and between the ruins the shadows were very deep.

At least he'd got his real arm back now. His junk and metal one might have hurt her, dug into her spine.

But soon he'd make her wake up again and then – and then –

They'd be all right, somehow. So his minions had turned on him. So his former best friends were out to murder him. So the rest of the world was attacking _his _city. He didn't care about that. Kaori would be saved and then he'd keep her somewhere safe until the fighting had stopped and when everything was calm again, he'd come find her and they'd go live someplace where she could be happy.

The city was so much quieter now. He liked it. You could hear people coming. And you could see the sky – shrieking above you like the white of a giant eye – and hear the air sighing through empty rooms and smashed windows and past the crumpled neon signs that still clung to the sides of the buildings. It was peaceful. She would understand that – she'd got a life for herself here now – he'd made her happy –

She had died running to warn him –

_He'd made her happy and that was the end of it._

He reached the top of the small hummock, a bare patch of ground in the sea of wreckage. He knelt down, let her slide from his arms. Crumbs of dusty earth stuck to the blood patches, and the drop of it at her mouth was smeared across her cheek.

He was the great Lord Tetsuo and with his powers he could do anything. He'd had a city torn down and ripped people apart by thinking about it. He was scared of nothing (almost nothing) and he would bring Kaori back to life _now._

He wanted to believe that, but staring at her eyelids and knowing behind them her eyes were still open wide in the shock of the bullet sending her flying, he was fearful now, he was whispering, "Maybe it's too late to save you…" Maybe it was harder to make people live than die…

But a breeze skimming the back of his neck chased the fear away, and he knew any minute now she would wake up.

DarknessFalls

The last thing Kai wanted to do at one o'clock in the morning was hurry back to a bar that they'd left half an hour before just because their leader had forgotten his jacket.

He and Yamagata caught up with Kaneda just as the latter leapt off his bike, ran towards the Harukiya stairs, and then disappeared. There was a yell, and a crash.

"Kaneda?" Kai yelled, hurrying over to the top of the steps. "Are you okay?"

"Ow…_ow__…_"

"You break anything?" Yamagata called.

"I dunno…_ow__…"_

Kai crept down to Kaneda, who was lying awkwardly at the bottom of the steps.

"Try standing up," he said.

"I got that far. It don't work," Kaneda snapped. "It _really_ hurts, and…there's nobody in the damn bar, is there? It's closed, isn't it?"

"Looks like it," Kai said, squinting through the dank, beery darkness. He knocked anyway, but there was no reply.

"I knew that."

"Sure."

"Hey!" Yamagata yelled down from the top of the stairs. "What's going on?"

"I think he's busted his ankle. We could try lifting you out," he said to Kaneda.

"Yeah, right, and drop me halfway."

"Nice to see you trust us so much."

"Has he broken summat?" Yamagata called.

"How should I know? All he keeps saying is it hurts!"

"Look at it. See if it's…y'know, twisted. Or if there's any blood, or bone sticking out."

"I can't see a thing down here. It's _night, _in case you hadn't noticed." Nevertheless, he slid back Kaneda's trouser leg and squinted at the pale smear of ankle. It was at a slightly odd angle, and when he touched it Kaneda yelped and tried to hit him, so he said, "It don't look good…"

"Thanks for the official diagnosis, doctor," Kaneda muttered.

"I'll go see if I can find…I dunno, an ambulance or something, then…" Yamagata's voice faded away.

"Don't say a _word," _Kaneda said to him as silence fell again. "Not one."

"I wasn't gonna."

"Good." Kaneda shivered, and tried to pull the sleeves of his T-shirt down a little further. "Man, I could really do with my jacket now, you know…"

Kai could sympathise. It was a cold night, the floor was damp (he _hoped _from rain) and there wasn't even faint warmth from the streetlamps far above them.

"Were the steps icy or what?" he asked.

"I don't know! I just tried to walk down them and they…ha, they tripped me up for no reason…"

"Sure."

"I'm fr-freezing…"

Kai moved a little closer to him, and said, "It's still hurting?"

"Still hurting…"

Kaneda shivered violently, and whimpered as the movement jarred his foot. Kai had a brief fight with his conscience before deciding he owed it to the gang to make sure its leader didn't die of hypothermia, and pulled off his own jacket.

"Won't fit me…" Kaneda said, yawning. "Too small…"

"Oh, shut up. Wrap it round you. You're going blue."

"You can't tell, s'too dark." But Kaneda took the jacket and pulled it awkwardly round his shoulders.

They sat in silence. Kai's teeth were starting to chatter, and he could feel goose bumps ripping along his arms. He tried, and failed, to read some of the graffiti on the walls around them, and wondered if Yamagata had forgotten them and gone into another bar or something.

"How long've we been down here?" Kaneda whispered.

"A minute? Geez, try to learn some patience. It'll do you good."

Kaneda didn't even respond, which was a bit worrying. Kai glanced at him. He looked pale, but then maybe that was the dark.

"Kaneda?" he said. "Maybe you should try standing again."

Still no response.

"Oh, damn," he muttered. "Kaneda, this is no time to doze off…"

He shook the guy, trying not to jar his foot. Kaneda blinked and muttered, "It's freezing…blanket…"

"I gave you my jacket, what more do you want?"

"M_'cold__," _Kaneda whispered, and he curled up against Kai, his head lolling on the boy's chest.

"I'm cold too," Kai said, more to the watching dark than to anyone else, and put his arms round Kaneda, and let his head rest on the other guy's shoulder.

They stopped shivering so much. That alone made Kai almost comfortable. By the time Yamagata came back with two grumpy paramedics, Kai'd almost got used to keeping Kaneda warm in the darkness.


	3. Results and Reflections

Results Day

(A/N: random AU fic)

Why was this taking so long? You looked for your name, found the results on the same line and then went away to get really, really drunk. And yet he'd been standing in line for… must have been at _least _an hour.

Kaneda glowered.

But assume it took another half an hour to get to the front of the queue… that meant in thirty minutes time, he'd be done with the Eighth District Vocational Training School forever!

And in thirty-one minutes time?

"Can't they just tell us straight out?" Yamagata muttered. "It's not like we've got the results they wanted us to."

"You could've got lucky," Kai said.

"Yeah. Pass everything for spelling my name right."

"Could you manage that – _ow –"_

Tetsuo had been silent since they'd started queuing.

The guy in front of Kaneda shambled up to the board. Like everyone else, he ran his finger down it to find his name. Like everyone else, he read quietly for a few seconds.

Like _some _of the others, he punched his fist in the air and yelled, _"Yeah!"_

"Nerd," Yamagata muttered. "So get on with it, Kaneda."

"Are we actually going to make something of ourselves?" Kai said. "Become useful and productive members of society? Prove we've learnt decent human values?"

"Whatever happens," Yamagata said, "we never have to hear all _that _crap again."

Kaneda marched towards the list.

First his own name.

"Guys," he said, "your leader has achieved… five fails, but passed general studies."

"Because Miss Asakawa fancied you," Kai said.

"Of course… Kai, you got… three fails and three passes."

"Better watch out," Yamagata said, shoving him. "You nearly achieved something there."

"Yamagata… congratulations!"

"Huh?"

"Once again, you got six straight… fails."

"Hooray for Yamagata the Great," Kai said.

"And Tetsuo, you got four fails and two passes."

"Beat you at least," Tetsuo muttered.

The four of them stared round at the clusters of students weeping, hugging their parents, high-fiving everyone they could reach or making preparations for ritual hara-kiri.

"We'll never fit in, will we?" Yamagata said at last.

None of them needed to answer.

Reflections

(A/N: Takashi, Masaru and Kiyoko are not mine, they are © Katsuhiro Otomo)

It was true, of course, Masaru was right; they couldn't live outside, none of them, and Takashi knew that now. People's faces smirking down – the icy air – rats out of the corner of his eye – his dungarees and jacket grubby and smeared with dust. They'd taken them away now, given him new ones.

The air smelling of petrol, of smoke, of rancid water, of old noodles. The lights, millions of them blotting out the sky. Clumps of dust and cobwebs clinging to the edges of everything. Music blaring from cars and shops. The roars of engines. People screaming. Millions of bodies around him, suits and cotton skirts, knees catching his hips, the corners of briefcases smacking his spine.

The toy train clicked and hummed as it made its way round the track at Takashi's feet. It looked silly now. He'd seen the real trains, bursting into his vision, stinging grit and hot air as they rushed past him, the rattles of their wheels like gunshots echoing against the sky.

_Stories. _The man on the screen had been thrown into a tailspin as the bullets raked the edge of the wing, and now he would never come home from the war, never see the homeland again, and Takashi had watched, his own face reflected into the background. There was more to life than Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and Once Upon A Time There Lived…

Even before he'd come to this place he'd known there had been other stories. Astro Boy! Space Rangers! Night Warriors available in a limited range of action figures. There had been a playground. Running feet. _You're it, I caught you, you're dead! _Things hadn't always been so quiet. Outside this room with its humming air and its silent murals things were still loud.

The real world would burn him up. The sky screamed down and there weren't any trees, just the hard pavement sending aches up his feet and ankles.

He had seen a few children, their parents yelling at them, or their faces pressed to the windows of the cars, watching the traffic, watching him? Had he been that loud once? Able to run that fast? Their skin had been smooth and shiny in the lights, their hair like little drops of ink. He was a ghost-child next to them.

At night now he lay awake and wondered if he could hear the real world buzzing around him. Masaru and Kiyoko could still sleep. And Masaru had been outside as well. He had felt the cold air and seen the city spilling over the ground. Didn't he sometimes wonder?…

Kiyoko dreamt all their dreams and felt their confusion, but it was different for her, no matter how many psychic echoes she felt. If she went out into the real world, surely it would close over her head like icy water and she'd never be seen again. For her it was sensible not to long for something else.

For all of them it was sensible, really. Here there were pills and clean sheets and smooth floors and quiet rooms. Here there were three square meals a day, mushroom soup, tinned fruit, water empty of everything. Home. This was home, a warm, happy word.

Would the rest of the world break through and sweep it away?

(Did he want it to?)

No, of course not. For both questions. Every day would be identical, like the same day reflected through millions of mirrors. They would never see Akira again and the memories of the real world would fade in his head until they disappeared against the pale blue walls of the nursery.

Was that good?

He glanced over at Masaru, who was sitting by Kiyoko's bed. The two who were so close to him they were almost one. One life reflected.

And yet…

"I thought you of all people would understand," he murmured.

A small fracture in the mirror's surface. One of the lives was different now.


End file.
